After defeating the Dallas Mavericks on Tuesday night in Luka Doncic's revenge game against his former team, the Los Angeles Lakers improved to 35-21 for the season. With three straight wins, the Lakers have moved up to fourth place in the Western Conference.
One of the most surprising and important developments for the Lakers in this final stretch has been their excellent defense. Since the start of February, the Lakers have been the second-best defense in the league, per Cleaning The Glass. Tuesday marked the fifth game in their last seven that the Lakers kept their opponent to 100 offensive rating or less.
The Lakers have mostly done this while playing small-ball lineups almost exclusively. In their wins against the Nuggets and the Mavericks, head coach JJ Redick only played Jaxson Hayes as a center in the rotation in non-garbage time minutes.
Looks like the Alex Len experiment is over
— LakeShowYo (@LakeShowYo) February 21, 2025
Redick giving minutes to Trey Jemison instead pic.twitter.com/KSDRypjKWJ
This means that Alex Len is officially out of the rotation. Ever since he was signed by the Lakers after the trade deadline, Len has been sporadically used by Redick.
In his first game, he played 22 minutes against the Jazz and the Lakers lost those minutes by nine. Since then, he has continued to lose his playing time and didn't see the court against the Mavericks.
Considering how well the Lakers have been playing, especially defensively, we can expect Redick to continue deploying center-less lineups. Jarred Vanderbilt, Rui Hachimura, and Dorian Finney-Smith have been doing an excellent job in the frontcourt, flying around on the defensive side of the ball.
Len can still be useful against certain opponents with more size and traditional big men. At the same time, not playing against Nikola Jokic on Saturday night and being firmly behind Jaxson Hayes in the rotation does not bode well for the veteran center going forward.
One has to wonder whether the Lakers made a mistake by signing Len as a backup big option.